The blog of the 'There is a Better Way' campaign by STUC staff about policy issues that are, or should be, in the news and guest contributors on issues of social justice. Written from a STUC perspective, contributions will often cover areas where there is yet no settled STUC policy and go into areas in more detail than our formal decisions. We welcome debate and we don’t expect everyone to agree with us, but we will remove any comments that are offensive, irrelevant or otherwise annoy.

Monday, 28 October 2013

Grangemouth and the demise of the industrial correspondent

The last few
weeks, and particularly the last few days have given trade unionists a fresh
reason to mourn the demise of the industrial correspondent.The causes and reasons for this are not the
subject of this article.But suffice to
say there was a time when a major media outlet covering a dispute such as
Grangemouth would have employed a political correspondent, a business
correspondent and an industrial correspondent, each with a level of expertise
and understanding which could be related to the reportage of a particular
event.That is no longer the case and balanced
coverage of the trade union role at Grangemouth has been the main casualty.

As research
proves there is a very strong tendency in the media when talking of unions to
focus on (perceived) negative and hostile emotional responses“anger, fury, threat, threaten, battle and attack”. Unions
are led by “bosses, barons and chiefs”. In this context it may seem natural to
employ similar pejoratives when unions suffer a reversal, but it’s not good journalism.By way of example contrast the use of
language from BBC Business Editor Douglas Fraser who also uses the humble word in the context of the union but who was content to
describe the Jim Ratcliff closure ultimatum of the Grangemouth
plant as nothing more than “assertive”.

The specific nature of Ineos has been
recognised by most of the journalists in the field - venture capital funded, lightly
regulated, “too big to fail” in the context of the UK fuel market and the wider
supply chain and with an aggressive management style. But there has been a near
universal failure by journalists when judging the role of Unite within this
dispute to apply any of this context in a way which might reach a more nuanced
understanding of why things happened as they did or what the implications might
be. This is probably due to a lack of familiarity with industrial relations and the dynamic of the workplace.

The quote
from MacWhirter cited earlier is a case in point.

Industrial employers will certainly
have noted what happened at Grangemouth. But they will also know, as most observers should, that the Ineos
situation was in no way typical and or one from which generalised industrial
relations conclusions should be drawn.Put
simply, the game changed when, in the middle of the dispute, Ineos threatened
to ‘cut and run’ threatening thousands of jobs and a whole community. The
bargaining position of the respective sides was fundamentally altered.This is the context in which Unite’s
subsequent actions must be judged.

For some
like MacWhirter the position on this is straight forward. Unite ‘miscalculated.’
It could and should have known exactly what Ratcliff was prepared or planning to do.

“Unite failed to realise that Ratcliffe was serious about
closing the Grangemouth petrochemical plant. If any of Unite’s officials had
lifted a phone to call one of Scotland’s legion of oil analysts, or any
business journalist, they would have been told that Grangemouth is on a
distinctly shoogly peg; that its out-dated plant and history of poor industrial
relations made it a likely candidate for the chop in a global business hit by
falling prices and competition from low-cost countries in Asia.”

The presumption
that the union was 'fiddling while Rome burned' is unsubstantiated nonsense.That the plant faced challenges, required
investment and existed within a changing global market was shared and mutually
understood information by management, union and many others.Far from being uninterested
in this, the union conveners and shop stewards had, and continue to have, a
highly sophisticated knowledge of their plant. They know the parts of
the operation which are profitable and potentially more profitable, they know
when and how this can happen. They know in great detail the implications of
closure of the petrochemical plant for the operation of the refinery and surrounding
industry. They know about the world market, about the balance between diesel
and petrol and the implications of the new US shale gas supplies.

So when
Douglas Fraser says (in the article linked earlier) “For unions, there's
a need to see the context in which their sector works, and to see ahead to the
direction their employers are heading. Change is a constant, so it's doubtful
that digging in to defend the past is much of a long-term strategy.”he demonstrates a straightforward lack of knowledge of the industrial relations
landscape he is describing, both in relation of the Ineos conveners specifically
and the role of the union nationally. (A
couple of links to Unite’s strategy on refining and petro-chemicals are
attached at the bottom of this article).

So the conveners wereacutely aware of the issues, but they were also highly sceptical about the negative gloss the company was putting on its
current profit/losses. And in this they were far from alone. On the plant itself they were in full agreement with Alex Salmond, John
Swinney and many others - a bright future was possible.They were also entirely willing to negotiate
and to make concessions to secure the future of Grangemouth and the jobs.

What the
conveners didn’t know, because no-one (including MacWhirter’s legion of oil
experts and business correspondents) knew, or even now knows, is exactly how
valid was the Ineos claim on monthly losses or the overall profitability of the
company.John Swinney on BBC Newsnight
last week insisted that the Scottish
Governmenthad undergone due diligence
in deciding to offer £9 million in funding to Ineos, but he didn’t for one
moment suggest that he or any of his officials had been able to gather a
complete picture of Ineos’s global finances.

So a more
nuanced picture emerges.Over the
weekend before last, when Unite was recommending that its members reject the
company’s ultimatum it was still entirely possible a) that Jim Ratcliffe would,
either of his own volition, or through the influence of key players such as
Petro China, lenders and the respective governments, pull back from the brink
b) that real progress would be made with the alternative buyer being courted by
the First Minister c) that the Scottish Government would undertake to take the company
into some form of public ownership if options a) and b) failed.

If Unite had
believed other than that Grangemouth had a strong future (irrespective of the detail
of any final deal on terms and conditions) it is entirely clear to me that, as subsequent
events demonstrate, its position prior
to that weekend meeting would have been different.

But by Tuesday
morning there were developments and/or a lack of developments which made the
situation even more acute than it had been prior to the weekend a) Ratcliffe had decided to go ahead with closure b)
whilst discussions between the Scottish Government and an alternative buyer
continued, the potential remained unclear and it was undoubtedly still the
First Minster’s preference that a deal with Ineos be reached c) it seemed
highly likely for constitutional or financial reasons (or probably both) that
the Scottish Government could not take Grangemouth into public ownership and
meanwhile the UK Government was palpably continuing to adopt a minimalist
approach to intervention. (The latter point about whether the Scottish
Government actually had the powers to take the plant into public hands was almost
universally ignored in the media).

According to
MacWhirter, the only way the situation was ultimately resolved, was when “the workers
effectively sacked their own union leaders”.But that’s not true.The
situation was resolved when the Unite conveners made a new offer to the
management.MacWhirter needs to imagine
that some sort of overthrow of power was effected or it wouldn’t sit with his
view that Unite were in this dispute for reasons of “obstinacy and
self-interest”.But to repeat, what he
says happen, didn’t happen.

Commentators
are entitled to argue that somewhere within the range of unknown intentions and
fast moving events described above, there was the potential for a better
calculation on the part of the union.But to imply, as MacWhirter and a whole host of other commentators have,
that the union’s options were somehow easy to calculate and unhindered by
difficulty doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

The real story of Grangemouth is still ‘what
Ineos tells us about power in Britain today’ - as blogged here by STUC General
Secretary, Grahame Smith on Sunday 27th October. We are still
awaiting a nuanced analysis from a Scottish journalist of how trade unionism and
the events in Grangemouth really fit into that picture.

About Me

The STUC is Scotland's Trade Union centre.
Our purpose is to co-ordinate, develop and articulate the views and policies of the trade union movement in Scotland and, through the creation of real social partnership, to promote: trade unionism; equality and social justice; the creation and maintenance of high quality jobs; and the public sector delivery of services.
The STUC represents over 596,000 trade unionists, the members of 37 affiliated trade unions and 22 Trades Union Councils. We speak for trade union members in and out of work, in the community and in the workplace, in all occupational sectors and across Scotland. Our representative structures ensure that we can speak with authority for the interests of women workers, black workers, young workers and other groups of trade unionists that otherwise suffer discrimination in the workplace and in society.